


Drowning Again

by Zaxal



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Incest, Supernatural Elements, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 01:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17377298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaxal/pseuds/Zaxal
Summary: Michael remembers drowning. He knows Gob does, too.





	Drowning Again

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @andithil!

It sits heavily in Michael's stomach; a tense, tight feeling like everything is, at once, too much and too little. He counts his breaths between practiced spewing of memorized information, hoping it'll keep him sane until the meeting is over.

Almost all of the investors are watching him with glazed, disinterested eyes. They get their information from sources other than him. To Michael, it says everything: he will always be the son of the company, the one who is trying to fill his father's shoes. What he's saying doesn't matter. He doesn't matter.

He stutters and sees, then, how their gazes sharpen. Only paying attention to weaknesses, like sharks scenting blood in the water.

His thoughts grind against each other. On one hand, there's the need to prove himself, to step above George Sr. and be _someone_ in the eyes of all these people. It feels desperate and claustrophobic and everything he hates feeling.

The other? The other is _rage_. Michael can feel it caught in his throat, simmering down his spine. He wonders if he could start swearing up a storm, telling him exactly what he thinks of each and every one – they might not even notice. They might not even blink! They might just stare at him with those dead expressions until they find one reason – _one_ – to say that he doesn't measure up.

The world seems to reel suddenly, and Michael finds himself with a hand braced on the table. Sweat beads on his forehead, all over his body, and soon chills him to the bone.

"Mike?"

Finally, someone asks, but it's after Michael's almost cleared the dark spots from his vision. A hand lands on his arm, and when Michael looks at the investor, his mind goes blank. Every piece of gathered information, years spent learning these people, how to please them, what they want – it all goes flying out the window. He doesn't even know the guy's _name_.

"I think you need to sit down, son."

Condescending. It might be less insulting if they just called him 'boy' dismissively.

But he slumps down in a chair, staring at the binder in front of him, and the words swim meaninglessly on the page. He looks down for only a moment, but when his eyes come back up, the sun is casting dying light through the window, bathing the room in bright, warm colors.

Hours couldn't have passed, but he can tell from the lack of noise in the office that everyone else has gone home for the day, leaving the janitor to clean and Michael sitting here in the conference room staring into nothing.

He doesn't remember dialing the number, but he has his phone pressed against his ear. "Michael?" Gob snaps. "What is it?"

"I-"

He doesn't know how that sentence ends. 'I just lost a few hours' will sound like some kind of drug trip, and 'I am alone at the office' sounds like an invitation.

He can hear Gob breathing on the line. It gives him something to match, to echo.

"I'm drowning."

That's what it feels like. Even though he can breathe, even though he's fine, really, and even though he's never been scared of the ocean, not even after-

"Shit," Gob hisses. "Okay, okay- All right, Mikey, where?"

"Office," he says, and half expects Gob to laugh at him because how can he be drowning floors above sea level?

"Oh- okay. Stay there. I'll- _fuck_ , I have to go get a car- The stairs are with you! Right? Guy?"

Michael hums an answer that's neither a yes or no and tries to remember if he rode his bike or took the stair car this morning.

This morning feels like it was years ago.

The pressure in Michael's head gets unbearable, and his breathing comes faster. His vision swims.

"Shit, shit, fuck- Stay there!"

The line goes dead, and Michael stares down at the binder.

A big picture of the plans for some beachside housing suddenly begins to move. The camera pans from the cheap 3D renders to a much more realistic beach. The sun is bright, and two boys run through the water near Escondite. It's a rocky beach, so it's not really a surprise when one of them takes the time to fish a rock out of the sand to throw it at their brother.

Michael misses, the stone sailing straight past Gob to plop in the water. In an instant, their game goes from something mostly innocent to the two of them scrounging for rocks and pelting one another as hard as they can.

It should leave bruises.

Laughter turns to angry arguing, shoving, pushing. Gob stumbles out, away from the beach, into deeper waters, and, in the blink of an eye, vanishes.

Michael calls out Gob's name and runs after him.

Something coils like a snake around his leg and yanks him hard. Michael is dragged over rocks and sand into deeper water where he sees Gob frantically struggling with more of the unending coils that wrap around his arms, his legs, his throat.

Michael tries to call out for him, forgetting about air.

Gob opens his mouth, a burst of bubbles and what sounds like a garbled scream.

Water floods into both of them, and it's followed by the thing lurking in the deep. Michael feels something weigh heavily on his tongue just at the back of his throat. He gags. He's going to vomit then _drown_ , but he swallows reflexively first. He feels something sink like a stone, down his esophagus and into the pit of his stomach.

When Michael looks up, Gob is floating free, his face ashen and pale, and Michael's fading consciousness tells him to get to the surface, but he can't.

He never does.

It's dark, now, at Escondite and two boys walk up from the ocean.

There should be bruises from the rocks, from the choking, from the beach debris raking down their backs or fronts. He doesn't know which way Gob fell.

There should be bodies. Two of them, floating on the ocean's choppy surface before being swept onto the shore.

Michael remembers drowning. He knows Gob does, too.

Michael remembers drowning, but every time, it feels like something new.

He doesn't hear the door shut and doesn't see the blinds close, but both are shuttered off by the time Gob's arms are wrapped around him. Gob eases him gracelessly out of the chair and onto the floor, muttering to himself.

There's a couch in Michael's office.

"I know that, idiot! I just- I- you're not okay, okay?"

Michael's breathing is uneven, and something shakes out of alignment. Half of him is left, half is right, there is overlap, but wherever he is, he can't pull it back together into one full form.

Suddenly, there are arms around him, and Gob pulls him back against his body.

Goosebumps rise along Michael's arms. The world seems, for a moment, to still, and Michael is certain, by the air he can't breathe (but is) and by the way he is freezing (despite Gob being wrapped practically around him), that he's not coming back this time.

His skin tears itself apart. The desk chair he'd been sitting in is flung against the wall, and the binder flies into the air, papers scattering like leaves on a breeze.

He can fill the room with thrashing anger, with the seething hatred he has for every single person who has ever sat around the table. He can fill the building with it. There is more of him than can ever be contained. He is an insatiable hunger.

Michael is seconds from flying apart when the world stops spinning. He blinks his eyes and sees the tentacles – the parts of himself that were not there until they, one day, were – sprawled out along the floor, the desk, the walls, searching for anything they can grab onto.

Coiled around them in a tight grip are Gob's.

Every single one of his has a twin, the skin slightly darker, wrapped around it and pulling until Michael feels like he is being rolled back up into one piece.

Weakly, he grasps back, and he feels Gob's shuddering breath on the nape of his neck. He watches their tentacles coil around one another until it's hard to tell which ones belong to him.

It feels so _much_ , but at this exact moment, feeling too much is better than feeling nothing.

For a moment, neither of them say anything. There's just the sound of heavy breathing, and Michael finds himself mimicking Gob's breathing pattern, letting the silence stretch on.

Finally, he has to ask: "How long did it take you to get here?" His voice is tight and soft.

"Maybe an hour. Had to take the fucking Segway from the docks."

He nods but doesn't know what else to say.

"I got here as fast as I could, Mike."

"No, I know," he murmurs, and it's the truth. If Gob hadn't tried to get here as fast as he could, Michael would still be alone, lost in memories that feel as present and real as this. He shakes a little, trying to remember what specifically set him off, but everything about the meeting earlier is a blur of anger. There had to be something that tipped him over the brink, but Michael couldn't say what it was any more than he could name the _thing_ that turned them both into this.

It's usually the other way around, with Gob having tenuous control over his extra limbs and needing Michael as an outlet. They fight, they fuck, they get it out of their systems.

Michael's never felt this unstable.

Without realizing it, he's coiled their collective of tentacles around them both, bringing them together and seeking comfort in touching and in being touched. He feels Gob's nose in his hair and can't be more than irritated that he needs to be coddled like this.

"We should go soon," he says, thinking about the people who have keys to the building and the various reasons they might sneak back in after hours.

He also thinks about the dock, walking off the end of it and letting the ocean swallow him whole. There's enough room there for him to expand, to lose himself in the primal urges of what he's become.

If he ever does, he knows he won't come back.

Gob huffs. "Soon," he agrees reluctantly and leads them into a tighter embrace. Around Michael's middle, Gob's arms squeeze him, somehow more intimate than every square inch of flesh that's touching all over.

Michael closes his eyes and feels the tension leave his body. But rather than going on another journey, rifling through hundreds of memories and associated anxieties, he stays right here, feeling.

It's enough.


End file.
